


Secretive Fingers

by MissILikeTooManyFandoms



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissILikeTooManyFandoms/pseuds/MissILikeTooManyFandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura knew dating a vampire was going to be a bit odd, but she never thought that something as simple and mundane as hand holding would make her love her vampire even more. Seriously though, why was she such a good handholder?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secretive Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Something I've been kicking around for a while. Finally just let it happen. I'm mildly obsessed with the way they hold hands, in case you couldn't tell. Kind of set in the nonexistent time between episodes 1 and 2.

The first time they had really touched, Carmilla was attaching a dried batwing charm to her wrist. Laura was too freaked out at the time, by the shockingly kind gesture and the possibility that she was next on the vampire’s kill and consume list, to take note of, well, anything other than the sheer absurdity of the situation.

The waltz was the second, though truly the first in all things that mattered, time they shared close contact, chest to chest, a surprisingly comforting arm around her waist. It was not the proximity, however, that really took Laura off guard, not that the gorgeous vampire’s face mere inches from her own did not send her heartbeat to dangerous levels because _wow_ , but it was the way Carmilla slotted their fingers together that took her breath away. Laura was by no means an expert in the courting of or even contact with women, but she had held her fair share of hands and done a bit more than that to boot, but the vampire held her hand in a way that made the simple gesture so much more, as if the act was even more intimate the dance it was a part of.

Her hands tingled for two days straight. Very distracting when attempting to fend off a cabal of vampires and an angry god.

Satisfied and impressed with herself that she had managed to set up a delay on her camera, avoiding the tricky business of editing for once, she was surprised when the vampire took her hand, slender, warm fingers sliding over her own a bit hesitantly before fully engulfing her digits. Giddy and euphoric from the gesture and then terrified from the rush to escape campus, the placement of their hands failed to make an imprint in Laura’s mind.

It was not until the cave, right before she wandered off, that Laura noticed after essentially innumerable hand holds, that Carmilla always took her hand like it was a secret. They always began the same. Warm, cautious fingers slid across Laura’s own, barely there, almost the shadow of a touch. She would tap Laura’s third knuckle, wait a heartbeat, her thumb stroking Laura’s thumb, and then her hand would clasp Laura’s, warm and firm, but never too tight nor too loose. Yet, they could never be seen. It was not just a matter of when people were looking either. Beneath tables, behind backs, and hidden in shadows cast by flickering flames. Those were the places where seeking fingers reached for hers.

Even when they were alone, or as alone as they ever were with LaFontaine and Perry around, Carmilla only sought her hand out in hidden places. She particularly liked the space between their thighs whenever they sat near each other, just almost touching. If there was a table, the vampire even dared, sometimes, to clasp their hands in one of their laps, knuckles dipping just so to the inseam of their pants.

In bed, their hands were perpetually linked beneath a pillow or beneath one of their shirts, knuckles pressing into the skin of stomachs and hips. Laura especially liked it when Carmilla kissed her fingers and pressed them to the skin just beneath her bra. It almost distracted Laura from the skin so tantalizingly close but out of reach. Almost.

They were laying on the chaise, legs tangled together, Carmilla reading and Laura resting against her shoulder, when the vampire, as usual, took her hand in her measured, practiced manner. With their fingers intertwined, which was Laura’s second favorite hand hold when their hands just had to be above shirts, and resting on the vampire’s chest, Carmilla holding her book with one hand, Laura found herself pondering her girlfriend’s fingers. Her brow furrowed and her nose pulled into the expression Carmilla loved to rile her to and though she could not see it, Carmilla could practically hear the girl thinking.

“What is it, short stack?” She turned a page, attempting to maintain her semblance of apathy, but Laura could see in the slight tensing of her fingers as they passed over paper that she was anxious for her reply. She had been ansty, careful, since their talk of “romantic wiles.”

“What is it with you and holding hands?” Laura’s beautifully thought out and masterfully planned conversation that would turn to a profound epiphany on her part and then end with her and Carmilla in bed, preferably naked, was betrayed by her propensity for word vomit. She mentally sighed to herself as she waited for Carmilla to work over her outburst.

“If you didn’t like holding my hand, you should have just said something, sweetheart.” Though delivered with a smirk, Laura felt the hurt rolling off of her girlfriend in waves. The vampire even moved to withdraw her hand, which Laura did not allow, clinging only more tightly to the pale digits, even reaching for her now free hand, the book Carmilla had been read having disappeared.

“That’s not what I meant. I love holding your hand, you silly vampire.” Laura relaxed a bit when Carmilla took her other hand in her familiar way, having been dreading her own snatching method.

“Then what has you so bothered then?” Carmilla toyed with her fingers, brushing their fingertips past each other in a kind of dance.

“You’re just…very particular.”

“About my handholding?”

“Yes.”

“Would you prefer that I wasn’t?” Carmilla, thankfully, seemed only amused by Laura’s lack of words and sense.

“No! I…just…it’s just different. Not bad different, good different. Definitely good different. You’re a seriously great handholder. I mean you’re great at everything but wow. I’ve never liked handholding all that much, at least not more than the average person but holding hands with you is just great and perfect. I mean I know when you said you were great with your hands this isn’t what you meant but still and I guess I just want to know why.” Laura took a breath, her face a deep red as she finally looked up at Carmilla instead of staring at their fingers.

“I’m that good, huh?” Laura huffed at the vampire’s signature smirk, but she did not fail to notice the swirl of emotion dancing in her eyes.

“You’re kind of…secretive? With our hands I mean. You always hide them. I know you’re not ashamed or anything. At least I hope you’re not.” Carmilla stared at their hands pensively, rotating them a bit,

“And you want to know why.”

“Yes.” Laura’s fingers shifted a bit as she fought the urge to fidget, her lip caught between her teeth.

“Being a ‘professional despoiler of virtue’ as you put it, didn’t always mean actually despoiling someone’s virtue.” Carmilla toyed with Laura’s fingers again, her own sliding past them to stroke her wrist. “The eighteenth century was a simpler time. I didn’t have to pull out as many stops, not that I had all of the stops back then. I was still quite naïve myself, new to the lure game and the game of love. Many of the girls in those early years were ensnared just as friends and even those I had stolen kisses from had very little notion of what such a thing might mean. Linking arms was quite common for young women. It was friendly and expected. You always wanted a friend near as you strolled about the garden.” She brought their fingers back together, fingertips to fingertips. “Hand holding was a different matter. Special. Intimate. Especially at a time when women wore gloves. Of course, it was not quite taboo. Just odd, but to a young eighteenth century girl, it meant more when anything further was either unknown or impossible.”

“Sounds a bit like waltzing.” Laura was not sure why she was out of breath.

“Better than waltzing. I’d like to say I’m so good at it as you say because of practice, but in all honesty, I haven’t held that many hands, cupcake. And the seventeenth century countess will never leave me, no matter how much I might wish that she would. Holding hands is still a bit new. I quickly abandoned the practice when more messy means to my end came along.”

“So the hiding is proper sensibilities and all that?” Laura squeezed Carmilla’s fingers as she nudged her shoulder playfully.

“Something like that.” Carmilla smiled before pulling the smaller girl even closer, tucking her into her side.

When the calm imploded and they stood beside each other, horror after horror reaching their ears, Laura, for once, sought out Carmilla in comfort, but she remembered and waited, her hand sliding behind her slowly and carefully, her fingers brushing the vampire’s pocket as a warning before sliding to her third knuckle and waiting  a heartbeat. Laura had to suppress a smile, her face heating up, as she caught the vampire glancing down in surprise, even while her face was trained on her bloody friend.


End file.
